May 16, 2015

Nigel Slater's simple stuff is where he excels, I reckon, and his latest book, Eat, is a welcome return to form. I've made his Root vegetable tangle 5 times in as many nights, varying the vegetables and, in the interests of getting things to the table faster, using a mandoline rather than a peeler. The rosemary and onion are essential; so is the large quantity of olive oil, I'm afraid, and the pepitas are absolutely non-negotiable but otherwise, play. I like it with a poached duck's egg (god, and how) as much as I like it with pan-fried tempeh or a spoonful of yoghurt.

May 07, 2015

It feels good to be back on the other side of the highway. Even though I werk on the posh side, know that shopping strip about as well as I will ever know any in Melbourne, living there was, somehow, not exactly right. I grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney for gawdsake. Little wonder I never quite belonged.

Home, of course, is the country but for the foreseeable future we will still need a place in town from which to operate and the last place was a horror story. The tiny, badly appointed kitchen turned out to be the best thing about the place; the bathroom walls running with water whenever it rained was ultimately soul-destroying. Rent may have been ultra-cheap, but it cost us dearly in mental energy. Last week we moved to place we now own. Run down but quiet and shady and very private.

Schmoo and I went for a walk on Tuesday, a short one, exploring new/old haunts. For years we lived in Caulfield and we know these pathways well. Familiar garden styles - less polished, un-designed - and lovely rambling houses, streets with funny doglegs and dead ends, yeshivas and proper milk bars. Flats everywhere. Autumn leaves left in piles where they fall. I very nearly cried.

The new kitchen sink is wonderful. WONDERful! I sleep deeply in the bedroom and wake, refreshed, early enough to get loads done before I tram to werk. The bathroom is dry where it should be, in need of some work but the bath is perfect, a delicious place to soak and float ones feet.

April 16, 2015

Claudia Roden's The Book of Jewish Food has served me well over the 13 years I've spent living with my Jewish blokes: she has put festivals into context, provided recipes that are anything but simple despite their seeming simplicity. There's a tried-and-true thing going on with her writing that I feel really drawn to, tried-and-true 'cause Roden recorded recipes from (mostly) women in communities that cook a lot. Many reviews on Amazon criticise the book for being light-on for Ashkenazi recipes, for being too heavy on the Sephardic food, but this is a plus, especially for someone who has vegetarians to feed. Sephardic food is very sexy - think Ottolenghi - and Ashkenazi food is...well, kinda dull. It's never cold enough in Australia to eat cholent.

Of course the word salad here is used in the context that we not of the Levant find difficult to accept. It's like a North African mash made with equal quantities potato and carrot that are boiled then mashed before being dressed with some fairly punchy flavours. This is gorgeous, something I made often during the just-passed Pesach.

claudia roden's boiled carrot and potato salad

Peel equal quantities (350g or 12 oz) of potatoes and carrots. Cut into large pieces and pop into a pot of cold water. As the pot comes to the boil add salt and continue boiling (at a simmer is better) for about 20 mins, 'til they are very tender. Drain then mash - you may like to leave it a little chunky (I do). Whisk together the juice of 1 lemon, 4 tbsp of olive oil, 1/2 tsp of ground cumin, 1 tsp of paprika, a pinch of cayenne and 3 crushed cloves of garlic and some salt to taste. Mix well with mashed vegetables and serve hot.

April 06, 2015

I was talking with Phoebe after yoga late last monday night, chatting about food and the politics of it all at the end of a class, about the awful (god, how) paleo diet and the energy that food picked, then cooked and eaten fresh as possible brings to the table. It's hardly surprising that Phoebe is a vegetarian. She's the spiritual kind of yoga teacher, not the sweat-it-out-in-a-gym kind. It was quite nice to have a sensible conversation about food for a change.

There's some pretty farking weird stuff going down in Healthfoodland at the moment. I want to stick a fork in my about Belle Gibson.

How to eat responsibly? Simple. This, from Michael Pollan, is all you need to know:

Eat food. Not too Much. Mostly plants.

It won't cure cancer, but it might help prevent it, and you'll be energetic enough to enjoy all the Good Things that life throws your way. It's easier to hop on the latest food trend wagon than it is to face up to what is true, to what actually matters. Just eat your vegetables, okay. And if you don't happen to like vegetables? Grow up.

(note to self: during winter, when planning for summer, try to remember that yellow tomatoes suck... :')

February 15, 2015

On Friday (the 13th) the nbn arrived. It was followed, that night, by a much-needed, much-desired storm. Rainfall up here has been poor this summer, dry but weirdly cool; it's a lucky day when you get that much rain in one hit and the garden sighed contentedly. Today is a warm, high summer saturday, st valentine's day (a bloke who was clubbed to death by the Romans, so, not quite so romantic a day in my book). We picked 17 kilos of apples this morning; a jelly of windfalls sits cooling on the kitchen bench but I don't have enough sugar to do much with the remainder. Writing sugar on the shopping list felt wrong given how little we use these days, but jelly requires tonnes of the refined stuff. It will, mostly, be for gifts anyway.

This is the first year we've had good amounts of fruit that the birds haven't got to - enough mulberries to make a decent stash of jam (rice-syrup-and-chia-seed-set, a la Belle Gibson's Whole Pantry); a freezer stacked with bags of blueberries (we also ate them by the handful, fresh); and then there's those apples of which, due to some careful netting, there will be more as the season develops. Lucky. That's how I feel.

January 26, 2015

We talked about isolation this long weekend. Peter thinks it's good, sees it as a strength rather than the weakness The Secret Language of Birthdays would have me believe the stars bestowed upon this little Leo. Me? Not so sure. I spent my 20's miserably isolated, exhausted from long days in bookshops and too slow at making plans for weekends to be socially connected. I saw it then as a weakness, one I couldn't claw my way up from. These days I find isolation absolutely necessary for clear creative thinking, and I also have a much richer social life, not full, but balanced, I would say, with the kind of good people I wanted so much twenty years ago. Isn't life interesting?

A few days on my own this week, alone (of human company) in the lush cool of my high-up-on-a-hill garden, an unexpected holiday offered by my boss in December. Frankly, it will do me the world of good right now to spend a few days alone. A friend and I spoke last year about how important it is to get away - from one's spouse, one's friends, the distractions we throw in our paths - and get things done. There are undoubtedly benefits to isolation, but here's what I decided in the car coming back to town this afternoon: I prefer the word solitude. It sits more comfortably, more creatively, and the ability to gain wonder from solitude, that's a true strength.

January 11, 2015

Rain. Twelve hours on Friday night. Twelve drenching, soaking, tank-filling hours. A tin roof and pelting rain - there can be no better sound to boost one's wellbeing, surely. The soil, though, it remains dust bowl dry. I think, on Saturday afternoon, that I should worry about this lack of water, but there are kilos of blueberries to pick, tiny, sweet golden tomatoes and, best of all, milky baby zucchini and their blossoms. All surviving without me and my army of watering cans. Bliss.

January 04, 2015

An odd thing happened last year, a thing held close to my chest for fear it wasn't quite real: a new friend inspired me to pick up a brush and just get on with the business of seeing once again. Always knew someday it'd return, longed for it if I am honest, and 2014 was a year full of lessons and troubles and deep creative conversations. Had I been warned early on, I would most definitely have ducked some of those, an old, old strategy I've long outgrown, but I faced stuff, explored things I'd ordinarily be afraid of. You know, went there. And yet here I stand, alive and well in 2015, with an engagement ring of sorts on my left hand, a slew of wisdom gained from a series of vexing sleep problems (some actual sleep, finally, as well) and an appreciation of the true value that werking offers. Happy. Disciplined. Relaxed. Those are my resolves for 2015. You?

December 21, 2014

My dessert repertoire, alas, grows ever smaller: a (mostly) waning interest in sugar and wheat means you'll get either Lesh's chocolate and date balls or the chocolate cake from Supper For A Song. BUT here it is, cherry season already and occasionally what's required from the kitchen is something more celebratory, something that feels like a proper dessert. Simple and untaxing if possible given it'll probably be hot. A cherry pie at some stage between late December and January feels right; fits the bill rather nicely.

Pitting cherries is, I admit, a chore, but you're probably on holiday somewhere anyway if it's cherry season. Pitting over the kitchen sink could be viewed a kind of meditation, no? Bloody juices a part of the (beautiful) deal.

Much of the pleasure of reading Nigel Slater lies in his choice of words. Good recipe writing is an artform, one I can only aspire to, and his recipes are excellent writing full stop. Of the pastry Slater uses to top a plum pie (and I chose to cover every single fruit pie I make) he says, "The crust is very short, and it really doesn't matter if it tears as you lower it over the fruit. Some of the juice will probably erupt through the crust as it cooks anyway. At least I hope so."

I toss pitted cherries in a teaspoon of cornflour and a palmful of whatever sugar is to hand in the base of an enamel pie dish. I then make the pastry using roughly equal measures of oat and barley flours in place of the plain flour he uses to make an even shorter crust, one I squash with the heel of my hand into a thick circle, gently lift on top of the fruit and press out with fingers to the lip of the pie dish. It's very forgiving and very, very good.

Happy holidays, peoples! Three mad-busy shopping days to go, so, be nice to all the sales staff out there and, if you're stuck for what to buy someone tricky, buy a damned book. One you've loved. Best bloody gift there is, a book. xxx

November 11, 2014

At some stage during the long, hard winter that has, thankfully, passed, a piece of news - delivered with barely disguised glee - stopped me in my tracks. Western medicine had, the newsreader declared, at last debunked homeopathy. What?, I thought. Huh? What's with the 'tude? Without a homeopathic tradition – until very recently the study of herbs was the sum of all we had available to us medicinally - Western Medicine as it is known and practised today would simply not exist.

All day it stayed top of mind. Sue and I discussed it at some length, and I spent the first few hours of werk throwing, from time to time, all sorts of herbal questions at google. Granted, Bach Flower remedies are pretty damned out there (and I say this as a person not at all afraid of esoterica) and yes, there are some nutty claims made, but how, I wondered, could anyone doubt the effectiveness of slowly steeped thyme tea for soothing - notice I don't use the word curing - a persistant cough? Olde doesn't necessarily equate to bad. A sadness about the 21st century human stayed there, stuck in my chest for some time.

I come from a family of dedicated, outer-suburban gardeners. There are many things I absorbed as a child simply by watching what my grandparents and parents did in their respective plots, how they developed ideas and fulfilled creative aspirations, overcame challenges and soothed nerves. The garden was a source of employment, both mental and physical, and above all a place of great joy. I've written before about a long-held desire to be a small scale herb farmer, and looking back at that post just now I'm happy to say I've come a long way toward that goal. The entire garden may be devoted to food, but the herbs are the most interesting plants growing there.

In turn my own garden has become a teacher, shown me things about plants, seasons and patience that I did not know I needed to learn. By establishing a rhythm to the ongoing tasks of weeding, sowing and pruning, and breathing deeply (and often) while diving deep into the natural world, I’ve come to know the self better. A surprising yet pleasing revelation. Therapist, meditation and workout all rolled into one very tangible activity, the garden is also, increasingly as I learn, my healer.

All of which is to say that I am writing a small book, quite a personal one, something I've kept quiet as quiet is, mostly these days, how I feel. Hopefully it will be useful - I feel sick about it being thought of as just pretty. It's not too far from completion - the pesky words part, anyway - and the photographs are slowly coming together. Can't thank my kinesiologist* enough for the swift kick needed to get it happening some months ago.

Going to share it over the coming months, parts of it, to flex my creative muscle. Thanks, as ever, for reading people.

P.S. We now have bees. Bees! Fascinating. I lay in the grass next to the hive for 20 minutes on the weekend, listening in to their collective hum. Beautiful creatures. Beautiful noise.